


Recompense

by Rave



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-26
Updated: 2007-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:50:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rave/pseuds/Rave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Which made a better punishment, the punch or the kiss? Riding the bull or hitting the ground? All his depthless want and his stupid love and all that going-nowhere hope. All of it hurting. All of it sin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recompense

_July._

 

"Broke somethin just about ever time I git on the damn thing," said Jack cheerfully. "I expect that's how it will go. Half the reason anybody shows up in the first place, just a see who's goin a break what."

It was a bright new thing, the mountain: like the July sun remade it every morning, whispering the columbines over it like unrolling a blanket, washing that brilliant blue across the sky and lifting the pines up slow like you might raise a barn. Sprawled in the long grass and wildflowers they were new, too, smoking and talking easy, watching the sheep flow safe across the plain.

"How come you keep that up, then?" Ennis said. The sun made golden the delicate hairs on the backs of his arms. "Ain't ever goin a get any better at it."

Jack looked at him briefly and had to look away. "Hell, Ennis, what else am I goin a do? Ain't got the brains for no business operation. Can't stick it out round here, do no damn farm work either. Sides, reckon I ain't goin a get any worse. Any how, don't need more'n one big win a strike it even." You do it for the feeling right before you hit the ground, he might have said. The silk and thrust, the feel of your own muscles aware of your skin: dancing with the animal, knowing you'll be bleeding and beat up by the time you run out of music. The sick thrill of those fireworks when you slam hard into the ground.

"Oh, you're a real fuckin buckaroo, Jack Twist," said Ennis, grin tight around his cigarette. "That's you--king of the goddam rodeo."

"You're fuckin right I am," Jack said. "One a these days, boy."

"Bunch a splay-leggedy fuckups," Ennis said dismissively. "Spend eight seconds ever couple months smackin your ass. Call that a job. Think you got something done."

Jack punched his stomach, awkward, sideways, flinching at the uncurl of arousal that flashed through him the instant he touched Ennis's skin through his shirt. Ennis dropped his cigarette, swore and automatically smacked him one hard upside the cheekbone. Jack laughed at him while his hand crept up to touch tenderly the sting Ennis's fist left.

"You're a real belligerent motherfucker, Ennis Del Mar," he said. His fingers moved ruefully, softly, over the place the bruise would be.

Ennis had a look when he was trying to be gruff and not to smile: the corners of his hard wide mouth twitched downward like he was holding a mouthful of whiskey. That look made Jack ache, made something slow and sweet unlace in his belly. "Got to hit you just to keep you from talking. Don't have the sense God gave a she-cat."

"Think you got a hit me, huh," said Jack. He slipped his fingers into Ennis's belt loops and tugged him forward by the hips. His thumb on the top button. Ennis's belt undone already. Hadn't even bothered to buckle it when he got dressed. "Can't think a no other way a keepin my mouth shut." He licked his hand.

Ennis didn't say anything else but he put one big rough open palm on Jack's face where his knuckles had been. Then their mouths together, Jack feeling his own shuddering breath between them, his head spinning up, Ennis pushing him down. The wet and whiskey in Ennis's mouth. When Ennis pulled away to breathe Jack heard the small needing noise his body made under the sounds of the wind and the long grass breathing. He twisted the collar of Ennis's shirt up in his fist and yanked their faces back together so their noses smashed painfully and Ennis's teeth hit his tongue.

Which made a better punishment, the punch or the kiss? Riding the bull or hitting the ground? All his depthless want and his stupid love and all that going-nowhere hope. All of it hurting. All of it sin.

Then Ennis put his other hand on Jack's face, cradling his head in calloused fingers. Kissing him like that was enough even while Jack's fingers were around his cock, jerking sharp to make it quick.

"Yeah," grunted Ennis, low and breathless into Jack's mouth. "Yeah--"

One hard twist. Jack could have laughed at the way Ennis's long body bucked, how it bent and shuddered, but there was a part of him too that hated to see Ennis reduced to this. These needs so sharp and aching and childish, and so like his own. He closed his eyes. He kissed Ennis softly at the corner of his mouth. Like he might have kissed somebody he loved; somebody he could protect from something.

Ennis collapsed boneless into his shoulder, huffing against his skin, stirring his hair. Jack felt his whole body jangling like a wire. He wiped his slick hand on the grass and wrapped his arms tight around Ennis. Careful not to touch him with the soiled hand. The sun warmed him through his closed eyelids. This, he thought, all right, this. This nascent shimmer which smoldered and caught inside him, gathering and pulsing til he thought it would clear tear him apart.

Later Ennis, stirring, his graceless thrilling hands at the tab of Jack's Levis, pulling rough on him. "Ah, fuck--" Jack whispered, melt and silver glowing and shivering all down his body, and Ennis murmured low and far away in his ear, over and over, "Go on. Go on." Little darlin.

 

_April._

The first time Jack took Ennis in his mouth they were both dead drunk, so drunk the silver sky seemed to wheel and spin over them, like years were going by, like it wasn't bad enough they had only two nights left. Jack thought dizzily this was the right time to try, right now when his ass was too sore for anything anyhow and when Ennis was too drunk to question where he'd learnt. Maybe he wouldn't've questioned it anyway.

Jack thought Ennis might object, even push him off. But Ennis it turned out took to it like a pig to dirt, though at first he made a sleepy, uncertain sound when Jack ran his hands over Ennis's thighs and got his tongue round him. From all the whiskey Ennis took a long time to harden but apart from the delay he was pleased, responsive, sinuous and pliant as a cat. He gripped Jack's hair and pushed his hips up. Jack who usually did enough talking for both of them wasn't talking, hardly making any noise at all except for the wet sounds and his quick breathing. To his surprise and secret delight, Ennis showed an inclination to pick up the slack: mostly cussing, with a scattering of endearments and fractured commands. _Shit, yeah, keep on, keep on, goddam you--ahh fuck, sweet heart, fuckin God_ \-- all the while his huge hands winding in Jack's hair and rubbing over the back of his neck. He hissed and bucked like water spitting in a pan when Jack ran his tongue over the tip of his cock, so hard he near knocked some teeth out.

Jack found himself astonished at the pleasure of it, the sudden command and shocking power. It hadn't been like this before, he thought, but then it couldn't have been ever, not til it was Ennis under him, Ennis's lanky brown body singing in every muscle to whatever tune he chose. His jaw was starting to ache; he put one hand on Ennis's hip to steady himself and licked the other to finish Ennis off.

It felt sudden when Ennis was juddering and pumping beneath him, and then his mouth filled up with bitter warmth, all the while Ennis's fingers digging so hard into his scalp. Jack swallowed a couple of times, kept his mouth around Ennis a long while, until the taut stomach relaxed slowly under his hand and Ennis let out a lingering breath. He reached for the whiskey and handed it down to Jack, who took a deep grateful pull and smacked his lips.

Then Ennis grabbed him at the top of his spine, like a kitten, and dragged him back up. Rolled him over on his back. Draped those warm loose limbs around him and kissed him, before even the taste had gone from his mouth, kissed him anyway.

"Get off," said Jack, abruptly sickened. "Christ! Don't do that."

"'S all right," said Ennis sleepily, folding Jack up in his arms and Jack wanted to struggle, to yell and kick. Could've taken any retribution, but not this unthinking, unbearable forgiveness.

 

_September._

Between March when he left Ennis and September when he saw him again, Jack grew a painstaking moustache. Lureen said, approvingly, it made him look like a real grown-up, stead of a overgrown little boy. She was fucking some bald little shit who did their taxes, so Jack couldn't care much one way or the other what she thought. Bobby said he looked like a dad on the TV.

He made more sales with the moustache than he ever had. He wore a sharp plaid jacket and talked fluidly, with a hitch and drawl that even he could notice. Every sentence out of his mouth felt like a transaction. His whole life seemed to be falling together all wrong, each piece turning up to be right in line with the others but it wasn't the line he wanted.

When he came to Ennis and Ennis kissed him that first time again, in the truck (because even though Ennis lived alone, now they had time to be careful, they were older, they had themselves under control) he made a startled sound not quite a laugh--"Son of a bitch--" and intoned like a preacher, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau."

Jack knew the story from his ma, and he knew too that it wasn't like Ennis. So he'd been reading scripture lately, or more likely had someone read it to him. Maybe that yellow-haired woman in Jordan City, the redhead always giving Ennis the eye when they went to the Blue Eagle Bar. Maybe another Ennis hadn't said about.

"So you goin a bless me, or what," said Jack. His long thick eyelashes and his fine-boned open face and the way he carried himself, couldn't help carrying himself, weight on one hip like a girl. He wanted to say, _I ain't your goddam mistress._

Ennis said nothing but rocked up harder against Jack, brushing the keys so they jingled and chimed in the ignition. The radio sang, tinny and crackling: _It couldn't have been any better. It couldn't have been any sweeter. We couldn't have climbed any higher if we'd been to the top of the world._

 

_August._

With the years and the sedentary work had come a slight bulk, an allover softness settled like a crow on Jack's bones. Ennis had got a little slack around the belly from drinking, but poverty and rough work kept his limbs sinewy, the wires of his long muscles tough and economical. If they saw each other every day, Jack thought on the road, maybe Ennis would have got tired of him, like husbands got tired of their wives when they started to sag and fatten. It was only the distance kept them on loving. The thought enraged him. That night in the freezing cold he was grim and fierce with Ennis, like he could prove something.

Ennis didn't seem to mind, not the fat or the fierceness; he responded in kind, near cracked Jack's skull wrestling him to the ground, and when they fucked hauling on Jack's hips hard enough to leave white tracks in the flesh there, hard enough Jack could hardly breathe, gulping down air, straining at the hard earth with his hands, his knees scraped raw.

"Ain't talked my ear off yet," Ennis said in some wonder when they were exhausted but not yet sleepy, tangled up and clammy with their cold feet brushing. "You sick or something?"

"The hell do you think I am?" said Jack sharply. He felt frantic and on edge, trapped in his sinking body. His heart was beating so hard he thought it might shatter the brittle regrowth knotting his bones together. "Think you're the goddamn Farmer's Almanac? Just cause I can manage more'n a couple sentences a year, don't mean I'm runnin my mouth off all the damn time. Ought a be grateful--would a said you wasn't too partial a all that talkin yourself."

Ennis said, with heartbreaking fond clumsiness, "Well, I don't hate it, any how."

What were they going to do, Jack wanted to ask him. Get old? Still be rutting like a pair a damn jackrabbits out in the open air when the arthritis made their knees too stiff to bend in the cold? How bout when they couldn't see, couldn't hardly hear, measured their lives out in those little pillboxes with days of the week on them? Couldn't set out on the porch, just set, quiet and together; there wasn't any porch, wasn't even any house, where they could be seen setting. Start hauling their canes, their bifocals, damn electric blankets, up in back of the pickup? They couldn't have that life. They couldn't have any life at all. The weight of Jack's misery, pressing all around, seemed enough to cave him in.

Ennis ran a hand over his chest. Jack felt his desolate heart straining towards that hand, thrumming radiantly, desperately, like the wingbeats of a trapped bird.

 

_May._

"You miss em?" said Jack, stirring the fire. The evening light made the prone mountains the color of wine, flashes of white in the strand of clouds scattered out above them. It was getting chill and they were naked anyhow, goosefleshing all over; soon it would be unbearable and they would stumble and grope their way back into the tent, their fancy new one that smelled like a factory, like nothing at all. Waiting out here as long as they could stand, they'd learned, made the warm raggedy bedroll like a private paradise. "Hard thing. Fuckin hard. Alma, she must be goin on eighteen now. Must be real pretty."

"Looks like her daddy," grumbled Ennis, but he couldn't hide the flush of pleasure he got just saying the words, not from Jack who knew him, knew every turn of his face even in the low light, even now he was so much harder and more weathered than he had been.

"That so. How much like? Cause maybe we could get married," said Jack, feeling his own grin start up like a low motor, "me an Alma, junior. Leave Lureen and start us a family. Have us a comfy little ranch, cow and calf operation up on Lightning Flat."

"Don't you," Ennis warned, shoulders up to fight, but Jack had his hands up in surrender, leaned back and shook his head. There were times he would have goaded Ennis, kept pushing--wouldn't have taken long--til he was spitting dirt with his face bloody. Would have loved it, too.

"Tell you what, friend," he said, and he couldn't stop the sadness in his voice any more than he could stop the smiling. He wished he could set his jaw tight the way Ennis did, wished his body could wage a real fight against the things that raged and swirled in him, instead of rolling helplessly, loudly, the way it did between desire and despair. "I can't have it. I know that. But you got to let me kid about it sometimes. Otherwise it just sets in there. Just rots."

"Just don't see why you got to keep on pokin at it," said Ennis. "Like peelin up a scab."

But it wasn't a scab, Jack would have said, it was a hole, a big wet fuckin hole just gaping in his chest, and saying he ought to marry Alma Jr. was touching the ragged red edges of that hole to see how extensive the damage was. It was saying _Good night, ladies,_ right before you get pushed off the gallows. He didn't want to marry Ennis, didn't want a damn white dress, honeymoon in California, cup of coffee every morning. What did he want? For Christ's sake. What.

He wanted the goddamn hole to close up, or else kill him. If nothing else he wanted that pain to be feral and new again, instead of the old predictable ache, boring and excruciating as morning head.

Ennis, who had been watching his face, said suddenly, "Hey." He kissed Jack on the forehead, and then on the mouth, with their old hunger; leaned in, bearing Jack down under his solid warm weight like a bride. Laid his limbs out in the cold soft-springing grass, under the glimmer of the new stars. He touched him at the throat and the soft belly, the vulnerable places. Jack's body hummed and trembled for him and his heart did too, all of Jack throbbing and tumbling in the same uncertain direction, you, you. He felt dizzy and his chest ached. The fact of Ennis seemed to him miraculous, easily revoked.

He closed his eyes: said, "Christ. Okay. All right."


End file.
